Biography

U2 is an Irish rock band featuring Bono (Paul David Hewson) on vocals, rhythm guitar and harmonica; The Edge (David Howell Evans) on lead guitar, keyboards and backing vocals; Adam Clayton on bass guitar; and Larry Mullen, Jr. on drums and occasionally backing vocals. Formed in 1976, U2…more

An Honorary Knighthood from the Queen of England (March 2007)Time Magazine's Person of the Year (which he shared with Bill & Melinda Gates in 2005)France's Legion D'Honneur, presented by President Jacques Chirac (2003)

The album, Original Soundtracks 1, also known as "The Passengers Album", has often been the topic of controversy amongst U2 fans and is usually not included with discography. However, one of the tracks, Miss Sarajevo, is included on The Best of 1990-2000 album.

Many of the songs performed in Rattle and Hum are altered from their original release, most notably With Or Without You, which contains a whole new verse to end the song, Exit, which includes the chorus from Van Morrison's Gloria, and Bad, which adds verses from the Rolling Stones' Ruby Tuesday and Sympathy For The Devil.

U2 Singles: U2-3 - Another Day - 11 O'Clock Tick Tock - A Day Without Me - I Will Follow - Fire/R.O.K. - Gloria - A Celebration - New Year's Day - Sunday Bloody Sunday - Two Hearts Beat as One - 40 - Pride (In the Name of Love) - The Unforgettable Fire - With or Without You - I Still Haven't Find What I'm Looking For - Where the Streets Have No Name - In God's Country - One Tree Hill - Desire - Angel of Harlem - When Love Comes to Town - All I Want Is You - Island Treasures - The Fly - Mysterious Ways - One - Even Better Than the Real Thing - Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses? - Lemon - Stay - Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss me, Kill Me - Miss Sarajevo - Discoteque - Starin at the Sun - Last Night on Earth - Please - If God Will Send His Angels - Mofo - Sweetest Thing - Beautiful Day - Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of - Walk On - Elevation - Electrical Storm - Vertigo - All Because of You - Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own - City of Blinding Lights - Original of the Species.

Released in March of 1997, the album, Pop debuted at #1 in 28 countries, and earned U2 mainly positive reviews. Rolling Stone even went so far as claiming U2 had "defied the odds and made some of the greatest music of their lives."

In March 1987, U2 released The Joshua Tree. The album debuted at #1 in the UK, quickly reached #1 in the U.S., and would go on to win the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, and second Grammy for the video "Where the Streets Have No Name".

In 1985, Rolling Stone magazine called U2 the "Band of the 80's," saying that "for a growing number of rock-and-roll fans, U2 have become the band that matters most, maybe even the only band that matters."

Many musicians have been influenced by the work of U2. There are several cover versions of U2 songs by bands such as Pet Shop Boys, Pearl Jam and The Chimes, and musicians such as Cassandra Wilson, Joe Cocker and Johnny Cash. U2 have enjoyed reciprocal influential relationships with artists including R.E.M., Bruce Springsteen and Anton Corbijn, as well as exerting influences on others.

"All Along the Watchtower" was recorded in Justin Herman Plaza in San Francisco in front of what many consider to be the ugliest sculpture in the city. Bono's spraypainted words required a formal apology from the band and were removed within days.

The name Achtung Baby was chosen so that their new album could not be taken seriously because on their last album Rattle and Hum, they were critically attacked. Achtung means attention is German: Attention, Baby is the literal translation.

The Joshua Tree is the biggest U2 album ever. In the US it was number one for nine weeks. In the UK it became the fastest selling album in history and went platinum in only 28 hours. It was on the charts for a staggering 129 weeks.

There are differing versions as to why Dave Evans is called the Edge. One is that Bono named him because he was always on the fringe, or "edge" of things. The second is that as a teenager, The Edge had sharp lines and angles on his face.

Larry actually started U2. He posted an ad on a bulletin board at his high school in Dublin looking for musicians to start a band. Bono soon responded to the ad telling him that he could sing and play the guitar. Adam responded next, and wound up being the only bassist to get back to him. The Edge, along with his brother, responded and went to Larry's house to jam... and the rest is simply history.

On March 27, 1992 Bono took his clothes off in the middle of a crowded restaurant in London. He was drinking heavily, but according to his publicist, he was actually being interviewed by a journalist who was so bland and unimaginative that Bono thought it would be a good idea to take his clothes off.

Brit Awards: 1983: Best Live Act 1988: Best International Group 1989: Best International Group 1990: Best International Group 1992: Best International Group 1998: Best International Group 2001: Best International Group - Outstanding Contribution to Music

Grammy Awards:1988: Album of the Year - The Joshua Tree; Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group - "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For."1989: Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group - "Desire"; Best Video Performance, Short Form - "Where the Streets Have No Name."1992: Best Rock Group Performance - Achtung Baby.1994: Best Alternative Album – Zooropa,.1995: Best Music Video, Long Form - "Zoo TV Live From Sydney."2000: Nominated in Best Music Video, Long Form - "PopMart Live from Mexico City."2001: "Beautiful Day" wins in three categories: Song of the Year, Record of the Year, and Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.2002: Record of the Year (Walk On), Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal ("Stuck In a Moment"), Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal (Elevation), and Best Rock Album (All That You Can't Leave Behind).2005: Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal, Best Rock Song (songwriters award), Best Short Form Music Video (all for "Vertigo").2006: Album of the Year - How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, Song of the Year ("Sometimes You Can't Make it on Your Own"), Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With vocal ("Sometimes You Can't Make it On Your Own"), Best Rock Song ("City of Blinding Lights").

In 2006, at the 48th Grammy Awards, they won in every catagory that they were nominated in. This includes Album of the Year, Song of the Year, Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal, Best Rock Song, and Best Rock Album.

Quotes

Bono: We invite people to bootleg our shows. We invite people to make copies, we've no problems with that, but if some guy is gonna make money off the back of this, we're gonna find out where he parks his car.

Larry: It's an amazing place, with its own character. You can get immaculate drum sound in the hallway, which is solid stone walls with a really high ceiling. I set my kit out there, and they put mics all the way down from the very, very top of the stairwell. I've recorded many songs out there.

Adam: When you start out, you make one or two records that put you solidly in debt with the record company. Then, if your third record makes some money, you have to pay back at the record company, and if you're lucky, you have enough money to live for a year. Then, after that, the band is bigger, you have to expand your organization and do more professional shows, so you're sort of back in debt again. You never really catch up; for those first five years you're probably better off on the dole.

Adam: I think there is a process of recommitment for each record, though. I think when we do get back together there is that initial month or two of dreaming up the kind of record you want to make. Then the history of the band comes into play, and you get fired up and inspired. You kind of follow your lead singer into the sunset.

Adam: We definitely went in saying we're not going to make heavy weather out of this. If a song is happening, we're not going to mess with it too much and we're going to try to get it down on tape as fast as possible.

The Edge: I could tell stories of the times each of the others has been there for me. I mean there have been periods when Adam and I didn't particularly get along, overthe years. Yet when I left Aislinn I moved into Adam's.

Bono: Some artists become dull when they stop drinking or drugging, but Adam's not one of them. He's his old self. He loses none of his rubber-band-shooting,water-gun-squirting, public-disrobing spirit when he doesn't drink.

Adam: I'll tell you, you learn a lot about women from dressing up in women's clothes! You learn that when a woman asks you "Do I look alright?" what she's really saying is "I have just spent a lot of time making myself uncomfortable. If I go out in this condition will I look foolish, or is it worth it?". When you ask a woman to go out to dinner it's not like asking one of your mates. She has to stop and think, "Hmm, dinner. That will be four hours of being uncomfortable." And if she says yes and then after four hours you say, "Lets go dancing, let's go to a club," and she says "No, I want to go home," it's because she has figured on four hours and now those four hours are up and she can only think of getting home and out of those clothes!"

Adam: I suppose we've always felt very uncomfortable around men who are part of that rock & roll culture, that macho thing. A lot of men in rock & roll tend tobe over-dramatic. They act like queens, regardless of their heterosexuality. They seem to be hysterical, rather than just happy to work away at something. And I think it's a need for female contact within our world. It's a very male dominated world and we don't feel comfortable with that.

Bono: Adam literally got me by the scruff of the neck and roped me into U2. I didn't really want to be in a band. I was only into it for the sake of the sound of electric guitar, drums, bass and singing. So when he started talking about actually playing gigs I thought,'What, y' mean playing gigs in front of other people?' The thought had never dawned on me. But Adam believed in the band before anyone did - he'd made up his mind at 15 or 16 that rock 'n' roll was what he was going to do.

Adam: I think women are the stronger sex. I don't think it's necessarily putting women on a pedestal, but I think it's acknowledging that women are stronger and you need their support and companionship to help you realise your potential as a man. That's an unusual theme in rock & roll. Rock & Roll is usually...(very macho) yeah!

Bono: The band insisted we meet them at one of the aftershows. You go into the innersanctum and the whole room is formed in a semi-circle around Bono, all paying court. My God, he could charm the leaves off the trees in summertime. When he looks you in the eye, you just presume everyone else in the world is dead and you're the only one living. He's still Jesus in a leather jacket.

Bono: If there are any journalists in the crowd, please note that neither my father nor my mother know I smoke. I tell my old man that I just smoke cigars and I don't inhale and he says, "Apparently" that will lead to stronger things.

Bono: 'I think it would be great to have Prince Charles come to Ireland and actually say: "There has been a terrible tragedy here and we're a part of it and let's try to work out way out." I mean something like that would do. What else are royalty good for?

Bono: My own dad didn't encourage me much, maybe to save me from being disappointed. And my way of rebelling has been to prove I can go out and win the love of the whole world. But it's a funny need for compensation that makes you need fifty thousand screaming people telling you they love you in order for you to feel normal

Q: Do you ever wish you were Edge, Larry, Adam? Bono: The bass is the hippest instrument in rock 'n' roll, the drums are the most exciting. I want to play the guitar very badly and I do play the guitar very badly.

Bono: That's 1-2-0-2-4-5-6-1-4-1-4, ok...hello, is this the White House? Hi, could I speak to President George Bush? George isn't available? But it's our last night...hello...could I leave a message for George? I was just gonna say I wouldn't be bothering him from now on. I'm gonna be bothering Bill Clinton now.

Bono: I do enjoy being in a number one band, and I do enjoy the jet so I can get home while on tour, and I do enjoy hearing the record on the radio, so I don't want to come across as being down-in-the-mouth about being number one. I am on top of the world, it's just that something else is on top of me.

Bono: Rock 'n' roll concerts, there's much more subtle things going on than the obvious. People are screaming more for themselves than they are for us because their lives are bound up in the songs.Songs have a way of getting under your skin in a way that movies don't. It certainly affects me that way. We've always had a strong and deep-rooted connection with our people.

Bono: It's not all of our beliefs and not everyone in the band believes in the same way. There are things I just don't want to talk about. I'll talk about them in music, the way I feel about things comes out on-stage. There are things that don't go well coming indirectly from other people.

Bono: People expect that because I am a believer that I somehow have all the answers.And I was saying that really I have more questions, as a result of being a believer, and the road I am going down is a road with many side roads, and you get lost along the way and I don't feel that I'm a very good ad for God, y'know. If ever there was a sinner there is one here.

Bono: What I like most about being in a band is the feeling of writing a song, one day it doesn't exist, the next day it does exist, then you make it into a record, then the record is played on the radio all over the world, and then you go to some far off place, and you come in in the airport and you hear your song on the radio, and that's a really special feeling; that kind of pays your wages more than anything.

Bono: The line that started it for me was one about a boxer, the idea of a prize fighter in his corner being egged on by a trainer. It's a sport that I've found increasingly interesting over the pastyear. I find a lot of aspects of it very sordid, a bit like a cock fighting , or something, but the image was very powerful for the song.

Bono: It's a funny thing but rock'n'roll bands know an awful lot about hotels and we spotted one in Dublin which was in danger of closing down. It was the only place in Dublin which would serve Gavin Friday when he used to wear dresses in the hay day of punk and we have a sort of sentimental attachment to it, so we bought it. It's called The Clarence.

Bono: We seem to be walking this line, and whenever we cross it either way it's a long way down, on either side, to fall. And I don't know how we're still there, but it takes it all away to talk about it too much.

Bono: I believe that there is a logic and a reason for everything. If I didn't believe that and thought that everything was simply down to chance, then I'd really be afraid. I wouldn't cross the road for fear of being run over.

Bono: When Christ was on earth he spent all his time with ordinary people, trying to give them something. I don't see any audience as being full of anti-Christs, you have to look beneath the surface. There are probably more people like that in a church on Sunday. The audience cannot be oblivious to the spiritual side. People just usually sweep it under the carpet, but it's there in their heads.

Bono: U2 is just natural, we're reallly just four people within ourselves we have a very strong relationship, like a love between the band which spreads to the crew, our sound engineer, to the management, even to the record company, and then spreads into the audience.

Bono: The concert in the RDS was the most successful ocncert of its size I've ever been at in Dublin. There was such an atmosphwere of celebration, from the front rows to the back. That kind of feeling between band and audience always leaves me breathless.

Bono: I'm like a clown, calling people to the stage.. it's like putting a magnet to iron filings, drawing them in. And once they are in position, you can feed them, give them what you have. We give and people look, and we give all... and that can affect people's emotions; so we get a sensitive audience, people who are aware. You see, I might be a hero on-stage, but off-stage I'm an anti-hero. So you've got this hero image, which is r&r, and the reality, where I meet the fans afterwards and I can't talk 'cause I get embarrassed.

Bono: I also see Charles Bukowski in my head and the kind of advice he gives like, "always give a false name!" But whatever lyric I finally put to it, the music strikes me as very sad. What I'm saying there is 'make it better, son.' The feeling I get is that the father has fucked off, or something like that. Then again it may end up being about Gorbachev!

Bono: I started writing the songs that becaem AB in Sydney. There was a woman living in the apt. opposite I used to watch when I'd come in at six, seven in the morning. She was overweight, had apunk haircut, and used to get home around the same time I did. I made up a whole life for her- that she ran a punk club, that her parents financed it for her. I started watching her through a telescope. We excuse a lot in the name of reconnaissance! One night I was watching her and I happneed to look two windows above her. There was another woman with another telescope watching me! I was furious! I was so offended, I jumped up and called her a bitch and pulled the curtains shut.

Bono:There's a station in Berlin, Zoo Bahnhof, which was the link between the East and the West. And it was where all the immigrants came through on their shopping sprees into West Berlin. It was also where a lot of hookers hung out and a lot of deals were done. And it just so happened that one of the lines running into the tube-station part of it was the U2 line and we couldn't resist the chance to follow that line.

Bono: Yeah, it's a song about hypocrisy. It's a song about my own hypocrisy as much as anything. That's what we started on Achtung Baby. It was just to get into the politics of your own heart and start with that.

Bono: The album wasn't an easy ride for listeners, when they first bought it. But, isn't that what r&r should be right now, is a bit awkward, a bit hard to digest. I mean, we live in this junk food generation, where everything is so nice, and it's air brushed and you, you know, it's easily digested and the way I look at it, it's just as easy to spit it out. And I think that rock'n'roll shouldn't be so easily explained - it should take a while. You know, it shouldn't be on a plate.

Bono: I just can't believe that we've finished the record and that it's out. That's what's amazing to me, because we've been working on it for about a year and you forget that when it's out people are going to be listening to it in the kind of way they are. It's been really amazing to hear people singing the songs and getting lost in the music. I really love that, it's great.

Bono: I wish SBS wasn't in the film in one sense. In another sense I stand by everything I said because it was the truth. It was the way we felt, on that day, on that night. It's more of a tribute to Phil Joanou than it is to me 'cos he talked us into it and, personally, I'm not sure that we'll ever play that song again. That's the way I feel about it. I've just about had it up to here with "Sunday Blood Sunday" as a song and the weight it carries.

Bono: Our audience has proved to be an elastic kind of audience. They're into the where-to-next kind of approach. They're one step ahead of us in some ways. Rather than have to lead the audience around by the nose we get the sense that they're right behind us every step of the way. We thought if we stripped away the U2 sound completely, if we immersed ourselves in gospel music, country, soul... we're bound to shake off at least 50% of U2 fans: they can't cope with this. But they really could. We might have the most elastic audience when you think of what we've gone through in the last 5 years. As long as the songs are good they'll go with us all the way. When we start writing shit songs then I'll know it's over.

Bono: Desire is about ambition... the ambition to be in a band. You don't join a band to save the world but to save your own arse and get off the street. You want to play to the crowd rather than be in the crowd. I wanted to own up to all this because people look at U2 and see all these pure motives, but we started off being in a band for the most impure motvies. We started off through just being bored at school. We didn't want to get a job in a factory or work for the government. We didn't want to be school teachers or join the army or whatever. People get in bands for all the wrong reasons, not the right reasons.

Bono: I'm dependent on music in a way. In writing words and music I'm attempting to idenfity myself. We're all trying to find out who we are and music is like that for me.I find that I almost hold on to it in a very desperate way. I want to reveal the dark side as well as the light side of who I am.

Bono: The funny thing about Larry is that, okay he got into the dress and put on the makeup but he was fighting with it. He wouldn't take off his Doc Martens and whenhe was sitting he'd put his feet up on the table. But as macho as he tried to be he still looked like some extra in a skin flick. That was the irony.

Larry: There is a love between the members of this band that is deeper than whatever comes between us. After almost 15 years, which would be time for a divorce in almost any relationship, we looked at each other and said 'lay down your amrs'." "People say 'Why don't you do interviews? What do you think about this? What do you think about that?' My job in the band is to play drums, to get up on stage and hold the band together. Thats what I do. At the end of the day thats all that important. Everything else is irrelevant.

The Edge: I think the version we released was the first take-one of those real magical moments in the studio. It was a very minimalist piece; the idea that a pattern is repeated over and over for a period of time builds its own momentum and character. This would be quite high for me.

Bono: What I like most about being in a band is the feeling of writing a song, one day it doesn't exist, the next day it does exist, then you make it into a record, then the record is played on the radio all over the world, and then you go to some far off place, and you come in in the airport and you hear your song on the radio, and that's a really special feeling; that kind of pays your wages more than anything.

Bono: When those people get up at the Grammys and say, 'I thank God,' I always imagine God going, 'Oh, don't- please don't thank me for that one. Please, oh that's an awful one! Don't thank me for that!

Bono: Hello? Is this Speedy Pizza? I'd like to order 10,000 pizzas for Detroit. We're at the Palace. D'a know the Palace? Yeah, I AM serious. I'm very serious. You can't make 10,000? Just make as many as you can. OK. What? My name is Bono.

Bono: Now we get all kinds of racist jibes because we wrote a song for Martin Luther King, or pinko jibes because we did the Amnesty International Tour. Wherever you look we're a target for the loony fringe. So the second night, we're on stage and I'm singing 'Pride' thinking, 'If someone is going to do it it will be during this number.' So I crouched down on the stage, shut my eyes and for a moment the thought of death crossed my mind. When I looked up I just saw Adam standing over me, between me and the crowd. It was a good, good moment.

Bono: There was a night in L.A. in the early part of the tour when we had a death threat that the police were taking very seriously indeed. Someone had sent the gun license into the U2 offices and they thought he had gotten into the venue. All of a sudden there were all these people on the stage which I really objected to. I never thought that sort of thing would bother me and, when I went out, it didn't. I just laughed it off, like The Blues Brothers - 'We're on a mission from God and we ain't finished yet.' The second night came up and the cops came up to us just before we were about to go on and said they'd made a mistake. He was coming tonight!

Bono: The music seemed too big for McGonagles. We wanted to blow the roof off. I always felt like that. We needed to find a bigger place to play even if there weren't any people there... just to fit the music in.

Bono: Yes, true, we made it hard for people to love, you couldn't put out a more mixed up record. I mean we really worked hard at that. We worked hard at messing it up for the masses and they still went out and bought it. It is an amazing feeling that the audience is kind of as hip as you are.

Bono: I have never tried to write this thing called a song that's played on radios all around the world, that window-cleaners hum, that people listen to in traffic jams. I was never interested in song: U2 came about through a sound.

Bono: Adam pretended he could play and used words like 'gig' and talked about things like 'action' on the bass and we thought 'this is a guy who can play!' He was a liar. He actually couldn't play a note. Dave was just playing away on the acoustic and people just kept on coming up and saying 'there's something wrong' and we couldn't figure out what it was until suddenly we thought - It's Adam! Adam can't play. He had his own distinctive style from the start - at first it was called BLUFF, but then it began to work.

U2 is a rock band best known for songs like One and Mysterious Ways.

U2 was formed by drummer Larry Mullen, Jr. in Bono's hometown Dublin, Ireland. The band's members are vocalist Bono, guiarist/keyboardist The Edge, drummer Larry Mullen, Jr., and bassist Adam Clayton. The band was orginially formed when Larry Mullen, Jr. was 14 and put up ads in his high school. Later that day, Bono, The Edge, and Adam Clayton had shown up to audition. U2 gained fame when they released hits like: One, Vertigo, Beautiful Day, and Pride(In The Name Of Love). I love U2, and I think they are one of the best bands from the '80s. U2 has won many awards: 1 Golden Globe, 1 Sierra Award, and nominated for two Grammys. The band was also the 4th band to appear on the front page of Time magazine. Past bands have been The Who, The Beatles, and The Band.moreless

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U2 have some of the most amazing and lively rock/pop songs that I know inclduing the masterpieces of "Beautiful Day, Vertigo, Sweetest Thing, Elevation" and the list could go on and on and on. When U2 paired up with Green Day for the New Orleans aid song "The Saints Are Coming," the most amazing sounds were produced when two top bands worked together.

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